


Scars and Memories

by QuenchiestCactusJuice99



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Reincarnation, Scarring, Trauma, burn wound
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-22
Updated: 2018-12-31
Packaged: 2019-09-24 12:38:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17100743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuenchiestCactusJuice99/pseuds/QuenchiestCactusJuice99
Summary: The youngest child of Lady Ursa and Prince Ozai, Princess Solin. Within the safety of their quarters, servants and handmaidens whisper amongst themselves.Unnatural, they say, disturbing. Fear saturates their interactions with the child, and they say, she is far too aware, far too alert for one so young, she watches in silence and understands. She manifests a flame at three. She does not set things on fire by accident, like Princess Azula did. She does not object to lessons in things other than firebending, like Princess Azula did. She does not struggle to control her flames, as even Princess Azula did at first. She snaps her fingers and sparks flare alive over her fingers. She watches them dance until they burn themselves out, snaps again to see them fizzle.They burn purple.(Solin is not a child and this is not her life - but fire burns violet and gold in her hands, and her handmaidens say ‘dragon fire’ in hushed voices with pale faces and trembling hands. Prince Ozai grins too wide with too much heat when he’s told. Solin will never call him father.)(This will cost her more than just his favoritism.)





	1. Despair (only lasts until you have hope)

The servants and handmaidens in the Palace learn to dread the sound of snapping fingers. Prince Ozai orders them to stop Princess Solin from letting the sparks sprinkle across her fingers, has even explicitly ordered her to stop.

Princess Solin, everyone learns quickly, does not take orders.

This, while it does irk the Prince, is not what tips the scales.

The sparks dance and fly prettily, alive in a way no other fire seems to be, but they hover just over her skin and soon her hands are littered with the scars that the Prince wanted to avoid.

Again: irking, but not enough.

The disrespect is only small right now, defiance from a child who knows no better. Still defiance; but ignorable.

Princess Solin never refers to the Prince as her father. Ever. The Prince’s increasing rage with this disobedience is tempered only by the fact that she never refers to Lady Ursa as her mother.

Equal disrespect - a serious offense, but still just from a child.

And yet - she grows, until she is seven years old and progresses far too quickly for her age and she is even better than Princess Azula in her forms, better than Prince Zuko in calligraphy, better at formal speeches and noble wordings than she has any right to be, and everyone can plainly see that she disregards it all to disrespect the Prince over, and over, and over again.

Eventually, it is too much. The too shallow bows, the less-than appropriate tones, the absolute, stubborn refusal to obey orders or call him her father - it finally becomes too much.

Princess Solin of the Fire Nation, daughter of Lady Ursa and Prince Ozai, to the knowledge of the rest of the world, died in the same horrible accident that claimed Fire Lord Azulon and Lady Ursa.

(Princess Solin of the Fire Nation, daughter of Lady Ursa and newly-crowned Fire Lord Ozai, is not killed by Earth Kingdom assassins, Lady Ursa and Fire Lord Azulon are not killed by them either. Fire Lord Azulon falls asleep after a large feast and never wakes up. Lady Ursa presses her lips together grimly and takes her ill daughter - the smell of infected flesh refuses to leave her nose, from the horrible burn that she never believed her husband capable of - and vanishes.

The world believes them dead. Of the three, one is dead by the second’s hand, the second has been made to forget, tears falling as she sobs and apologizes to the child she lost in her travel, and the third lives on. Princess Solin is believed dead by everyone who knew of her, even her mother. Because disappearing has never been an issue for Solin - and that woman was not her mother.)

XxXxXxXxXOoOoOoOoO

It was, in hindsight, not nearly as good an idea as she thought it was. Fleeing from the woman who had brought her along and intended to keep her safe by deceiving her had seemed a wonderful idea, and it was not hard to simply… walk away from the camp as the woman slept.

Less wonderful was the fact that she had forgotten that Lady Ursa was caring for the handprint seared into her throat by Prince - Fire Lord - Ozai.

Solin is seven years old and alone in a wilderness somewhere in the Fire Nation. She cannot travel far, not with her child body, no matter how agile or durable it is.

She did not think this through.

(She falls asleep in the roots of an old tree with tired prayers and feverish worries in her mind, and spirits watch her closely, reach out to her - Solin falls asleep in the roots of an old tree in the Fire Nation and wakes up collapsed on the side of a road in the Earth Kingdom. Her clothes are sootstained and crumpled, and the bandages on her neck are sloppy and hastily applied. She is tired and she aches and she can’t even sit up without bringing tears to her eyes, so she lies on the side of the road and tries not to move, her face tacky from saline and painted with dirt and ash.

She no longer cares who finds her, hoping only that they will take the pain away.)


	2. Hidden In Plain Sight (Plain Ice)

Infection and fever are deadly. The old woman and her son, whom she had awoken in the care of, were unsure what to think of her recovery, having honestly not expected her to survive the second night. It was a quiet town, they lived in, those people with strange mannerisms and odd clothing, who don’t ask who she is or what happened to her.

 

Many people visit and seem about to, but the old woman’s son murmurs things in their ears and their mouths close and they only watch her sadly.

 

She thinks maybe they think she was orphaned by the Fire Nation, that she is silent and watches everything with suspicious, attentive eyes because her world is no longer anything but ashes all around her.

 

They are not wrong.

 

After a time, she settles - reluctantly; discomfited - into the routine there.

 

She sleeps restlessly, awakes with screams and cries on the top of her tongue, held in her throat by the black steel teeth of a Fire Nation trap. She sits with her head bowed as much as the stiff flesh on her neck allows, thick black hair sheared to her chin and hanging in her eyes, and lets the old woman - Tei Ming - dress her in the fashions of the new place she resides, in clothes she makes with a battered needle and old fabrics. With every nightmare of drowning in heat, she walks out into the cool night air and  _ breathes _ , feeling the cold burn of her fire deep in her stomach fall and rise with every inhale and exhale, thankful for the tingling, soft-sharp needles of chilled warmth that are so much different from the blistering scream that haunts her every moment, waking or not.

 

On these walks, out in the fields instead of the town, she asks herself,  _ who am I? _

 

Because, really - who is she?

 

_ Princess Solin _ , some part of her insists, righteously, zealously indignant. But it doesn’t feel right.

 

_ Taylor, _ a different, smaller part of her suggests timidly, not at all confident. But that doesn’t feel right either, not even close.

 

_ Solin _ , yet another part of her impresses into her mind the simple word, simple name. But that still isn’t right, even if it is the closest.

 

Who is she, in all seriousness?  _ Who? _

 

She is not soft or kind or well-mannered, had always chafed at expectations. She had never fit into that mould, had never been able to squash down pieces of her personality to fit correctly, to become a perfect doll for no use other than ‘the spare’. A pretty thing to look at, and nothing more. This is not her.

 

She is not plagued by social anxiety, nor is she particularly daredevilish, or ‘devil may care’. She does not have many bursting emotions or carefully tended stresses locked away in her skull. This is no longer her, and will never be again.

 

She is not an exceptional blend of personalities, nor even a slightly good blend. She is sometimes impulsive, she is too apathetic, she has less emotion to rein in, she holds too many habits from one time and too little from another, with no way to tell which is which and one from another. This is so close to her, and yet…

 

She is not Princess Solin of the Fire Nation. She is not Taylor from Fourth and Fifth. She is not even Solin.

 

So who is she? What does she have left that makes her  _ her? _

 

She breathes, left stumbling in the dark for answers nowhere with reach, and as her breath trembles, her fire wanes, uncertain.

 

XxXxXxXxXOoOoOoOoO

 

Eight months pass in agonizing slowness and no time at all. It is exactly on the new moon, on a night where crisp, winter-fresh air tasted of pure ice and there is no light to brighten her way that she finds her answer.

 

_ Who am I _ , she had asked herself many times by now,  _ what is left of my world, of me? _

 

The only thing left, she had mused, sitting in the lower limbs of a pickle-berry tree and gazing out over a beautifully silent, breathtaking field of glittering white powder that could very well pass for diamond and silver. Snow was a shock. A cold, miserable shock until she learned it was as beautiful as her fire, in moments like these.

 

The sight had left her absentminded, feeling wistfully, oddly poetic.

 

_ The only thing left is scars and memories _ , she thinks.

 

And that was the truth, wasn’t it? Scars on her hands from entrancing sparks and telltale snaps, a scar on her neck from a man who she’d never expected anything from but somehow was still let down by, little scars from nicks and mishaps working with Tei Ming and Saseo. Memories of screaming metal machines and smoke-choked skies and polluted air, memories of featherlight kisses on her forehead that she shied from, of strict instructors smiling at perfect forms, of a shadowed grin surrounded by hungry flames.

 

She doesn’t understand it - her flames are not like that. They are gentle like a curious kitten and hot like a fresh cup of jasmine tea and cool like burn cream.

 

Ozai - Prince, Fire Lord,  _ never  _ father; and she might not know herself but she  _ is not his  _ \- holds fire that is  _ hungry _ , desperate and cruel like a man dying of thirst stealing the last of the water in a desert is desperate and cruel. It doesn’t sputter but it’s still gasping for air, struggling despite its fierce power. It has the malice and mindless animosity of a cornered animal - desperate and cruel in a million different ways, something to be pitied from a distance but still needing to be defended against.

 

Her fire is so much different, Zuko’s,  _ Azula’s _ , all of them had unique feels, but Ozai was  _ killing _ Azula’s, dampening Zuko’s. He was forcing Azula’s to be different than it was meant to be, and with every attack on her fire, her mind was affected.

 

Inner fire is not meant to be trifled with, a spirit-given gift of life, for life without it was no life at all. And Ozai was killing it _. _ Killing  _ Azula. _

 

Scars and memories and dragon fire. Not a princess, not a girl playing adult, not just Solin.

 

She looks out over the field, swinging her legs gently, feeling the scrape of cold bark against her thighs. Then she stills.

 

_ Cold, _ she thinks,  _ snow.  _ And she wants to laugh hysterically at the irony, wants to sob uncontrollably at the simplicity.

 

Fire, surrounded by snow. Hidden by it.  _ Disguised _ by it.

 

“Xue,” She whispers to the still air, wild smile pulling at her lips, scar throbbing a painful reminder against her neck. And then she does laugh, a croaky, hoarse sound from a child’s throat. “Snow.”

 

XxXxXxXxXOoOoOoOoO

 

“Xue,” The girl says, apropos of nothing.

 

Tei Ming stops sewing, turning her head to gaze upon the child in disbelief and growing happiness. The voice was unused and rough and cracked, but...

 

She had spoken _._ Tei Ming had thought - and indeed, so had Saseo - that the girl might never speak again, whether of choice - she had already seen far too much for her age, no one would fault her - or of the horrid mark seared into her pale skin.

 

“My name,” She continues, tilting her head up to look into Tei Ming’s eyes, “is Xue.”

 


End file.
